


Pattern

by sunnyamazing



Category: Bodyguard (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, Canon Universe, F/M, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 09:42:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20964452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunnyamazing/pseuds/sunnyamazing
Summary: He is a few steps in front of her by now, not many, maybe three at most. But he strides towards her front door and she follows along behind. It is an established routine by now, these last few days.Some may even begin to refer to it as a pattern.“Do you prefer David or Dave?”





	Pattern

**Author's Note:**

> Another one of the Julia and David scenes that I felt the need to write. 
> 
> Thank you to all of you for being so welcoming of this new person to your extremely talented fandom. I am so happy to be here.

> _ **Pattern** _
> 
> noun: a regular and intelligible form or sequence discernible in the way in which something happens or is done.

She brushes a stray curl away from her face before she begins to place the paperwork back into the red ministerial case which has sat beside her since they left the Home Office. 

The ride back this evening has been not as long as previous evenings, her PPO had been happy enough for Terry to take a more direct route back to her flat tonight. Terry had weaved them in and out of the traffic easily and before she had realised where she was, the car had begun to slow. 

She slips the paperwork down and into the case, leaving the report she was reading last on top. She will have to finish that particular one once she is inside. She stares at the back of her PPO’s head as the car stops beside the pavement. Her car is illuminated by not only the interior light but the head lights of the backup vehicle behind them. 

Her PPO is quick to move from the car, she watches as he steps from the vehicle, adjusts his jacket, fastening one of the buttons and then steps back towards her, before he leans down and opens the car door. 

“Good night Terry.” She says quietly as she closes the case and unclips her seatbelt, one hand then moving to the handle of the case and the other to the handle of her bag.

“Good night.” Her driver replies kindly as she gives him a small smile. She does like Terry, he has been her driver for three years and she has always found him to be excellent at his job. He seems to know when she would like silence and sometimes he even knows when she needs a small bit of conversation. He is also a good driver, not like some of the others she’s had; he doesn’t drive like he is navigating the London streets like they are some kind of race track.

She carefully moves from the back seat; a delicate balance of precision and practice means that she is able to climb out whilst holding both the bag and the case at the same time. It all commences with the one foot, her toe which is enclosed in a grey heel touches the gutter first as the rest of her foot presses down against the ground and then once she is balanced the other foot follows. 

He stares down past her, his eyes focused down the length of her street. She can see him scanning their immediate area for threats. He doesn’t see any though, so he closes the car door and then moves passed her. 

The breeze rustles around her feet as she heads for home. It has been another long day.

He is a few steps in front of her by now, not many, maybe three at most. But he strides towards her front door and she follows along behind. It is an established routine by now, these last few days.

Some may even begin to refer to it as a pattern.

They both nod at the officer who is beside her door and he steps to the side, allowing PS Budd to open the door for her. She steps in behind him and then the door closes.

“One moment please, ma’am.” He tells her, in his Scottish lilt. It is the same thing he tells her every time he escorts her home. It is all a part of the pattern.

She nods and places both the case and her bag down beside her, also part of the pattern. She leans to the side and rests against the wall of her flat. She can hear PS Budd strolling through the rooms, moving quickly throughout the expanse of her home.

She slips her hand into the pocket of her maroon trench coat and pulls out her phone. She doesn’t just like to stand here and do nothing while she waits. She needs to be doing something, Julia doesn’t like to stand idle.

She scrolls through her messages, one from Rob, two from Roger and then one from the office. She deletes the two from Roger, one of which reminds her again that when he calls; she should answer. 

Her PPO doesn’t return to her immediately, she can still hear the sound of his feet on her floor. But she does not rush him or make any sullen comments, she’s used to it now. It has become a part of the pattern.

She is staring down at the screen, her fingers typing back to Rob, reminding him that he had better find a suitable replacement for Chanel and fast. Also, that this time he should check the attitude of the people he is interviewing. She does not wish for a repeat performance from her interview with Andrew Marr. The Home Secretary can never be interviewed with a coffee stain all down the front of her blouse. It was only lucky that her PPO had been of the quick thinking to loan her his shirt; which reminds her, she must give it back to him. 

Rob must have been awaiting her reply, as her screen soon shows that he too is typing. She continues with her sentence, before her attention is drawn from the phone to Sergeant Budd who has returned to stand in front of her.

She raises her head from the phone, “All clear, ma’am.” He explains. 

“Oh.” She replies quietly as she returns to the phone, finishes her sentence and then begins to step forward into the flat, her finger pressing her phone to lock. He has stopped still and as she quickly moves passed him she cannot help but give him a small smile before she quickly glances to the top of his shoulders. 

He doesn’t say anything to her and she can hear that he has begun to move, “Sergeant Budd.” She calls after him, he turns back around to face her and she raises one finger towards him. She sees him wait for her and she heads into the other room, her phone still in her hand.

She strides into the other room and once in there she places the phone down beside her, shuffles out of her trench coat, before hanging it neatly and then collects her PPO’s shirt from where it has been hanging since she’d had it cleaned.

The plastic over the hanger rustles in her hand as she retrieves her discarded phone and then returns to where she left PS Budd only moments ago, the corners of her mouth slightly upturning as she sees him once more. She raises the hanger in her hand as she announces, “Your shirt.”

He raises his eyebrows as he takes a few steps closer to her, she wonders if he has forgotten that he leant it to her, in her time of wardrobe crisis. “Thank you, ma’am.” He replies as she holds the hanger out towards him, he takes hold of the shirt by the collar and she drops her hand.

Handing him back the shirt she had needed to borrow because of Chanel, she feels that she needs to thank him for his professionalism in handling Chanel’s exit from the Home Office. She pauses for a moment before she begins to speak, “I’m sorry about Chanel.” She begins, one of her hands making a slight gesture, “She took her dismissal badly,” she states, before realising that badly was most likely an understatement, Julia thinks that the whole building could have almost heard the shrill screams of Chanel and her displeasure at the whole situation. “And my staff thought you’d be the best person to deal with it.”

His face is emotionless as she finishes speaking, he doesn’t give much away. She continues to move towards the kitchen, smiling slightly to herself as she walks before she pauses and places an open hand on the side of the wall, turning back to look at him. “If you can talk someone out of blowing up a train…” She doesn’t continue the rest of her sentence, she leaves it open, she thinks he must know what she means. 

She walks towards her fridge, the sound of her heels light against the wooden floor, opening the door carefully, the sound of the glass clinking against each other as the door swings open. Her fingers gently close around the previously opened bottle of wine and as she turns back towards where she left him, she can see that he has stepped to the side and he is now looking at her.

She smiles at him, widely so he can see her teeth, he is watching her again. But she doesn’t know why she should be so surprised about that, watching her is his job after all. She holds the bottle towards him. “Want one?” She asks him.

“On duty, ma’am,” is the reply she receives and as she steps out of his line of sight, she wonders if she has ever offered one of her PPO’s a glass of wine in her house before. She doesn’t remember doing so. She’s beginning to wonder what exactly it is about this PPO that has made her behave in this manner.

“Soft drinks in the fridge.” She tells him as she leans down to fetch herself a glass and again she wonders why she is offering him another type of beverage. This isn’t part of the pattern at all. 

She places the glass down on the counter in front of her, as he declines her offer once more. “No. Thank you, ma’am.” She looks at him for a second, a smile plays across her lips, before she removes the plastic wine cork with a quiet pop before putting it down in front of the glass.

She looks down at the glass for just a moment before she raises her head and asks, “Do you prefer David or Dave?” and before he can answer her, she drops her head down to watch the wine fill her glass.

“I answer to both, ma’am.” He replies as she still watches the wine trickle from the bottle into the glass and she cannot help but wonder why she asked him that question. For days now, she’s referred to him as her PPO, or PS Budd or Sergeant Budd. Never by his first name, but here she is asking him which one he’d prefer, as if she is about to imminently start referring to him by his first name. She wonders what is next? Her asking him to call her Julia?

The glass has enough wine inside it and she raises the bottle, with her other hand she closes her fingers around the wine glass. She raises her head towards him, before she turns to leave the bottle on the counter, half placing the plastic cork back inside the mouth of the bottle. 

She steps around the counter and walks back closer to him, her PPO, David slash Dave, whatever she has decided she is calling him now. “You won’t have heard yet,” she begins as she moves beside him making her way towards the table, she can feel his eyes following her again. “But we are going to charge the male 1stof October attacker.” They make eye contact for a moment.

She then diverts her eyes to stares down at the files in front of her, the ones that she left here last evening, she isn’t quite sure why she is telling him this, he would have found out soon enough. But it seems that she wants to be the one who tells him that his excellent work has paid off. “He appears to have plausible links to Islamic terrorists,” she explains as her left-hand shuffles some of the papers to one side and her eyes raise to meet his once more. “Though I’m not at liberty to say more at this stage.” She explains, there is only so much information she can tell him, she’s probably already told him too much.

He looks back at her, before he slightly drops his head, one of his hands is still holding his plastic covered shirt. “That’s good news, thanks, ma’am.” He replies with a very small smile and a minor nod of his head.

She places the glass down on the table as she listens to him, before she responds. “And thanks to you, his wife’s alive to assist with our inquires.” She states as she runs one of her hands through her hair, the manicured curls of this morning have long disappeared. She pauses for a moment before she studies his face once again; whatever he is thinking she cannot get a read on it.

She diverts her eyes out into the wider expanse of the room, holding out both of her hands, palms raised for just a second. “It seems I’m constantly finding reasons to compliment you.” She says to him as she tilts her head to the side before staring back down at the papers in front of her.

“Not quite constantly.” Is the reply that she receives, the tone of his voice has changed, there is almost a hint of sarcasm there, it isn’t the same tone she is used to him using. That tone, it isn’t part of the pattern and maybe the sarcasm isn’t just hinted at, maybe he is actually being sarcastic with her.

Her attention is drawn back to him, her eyes carefully study the man standing in front of her, she lets her eyes linger over his frame for just a second. She wonders just for a moment how it had been decided that she would be the one to have a bodyguard who looks like him. He isn’t the usual standard at all, he’s in fact quite the opposite.

She has to admit that she is intrigued. He intrigues her. She wants to know more about him. Even though knowing more about her PPO is not part of the pattern at all.

“Is there a Mrs Budd?” she questions him before she turns her head back away from him, staring downwards. Internally she curses herself, of all the questions to ask, that is the first that came to her mind.

“Yes, ma’am. Vicky.” He tells her, divulging her his wife’s name as well as the fact that there is a Mrs Budd. “We have two children.” He adds as an extra piece of information. 

She has begun to lean over the table now, but she turns her focus back to him, “Oh,” she replies, “what are their names?” she blinks her eyes before returning to the paperwork once again. 

“Ella and Charlie.” He tells her and she can see that there is a happiness in his eyes when he says their names.

“Oh,” escapes her lips as she smiles a little smile, shuffling the papers around in front of her. “Your shifts …” she begins, still staring downward, “must make home life difficult.” 

He doesn’t answer her and she can feel a shift in his demeanour, as if there is something else now on his mind.

She returns her attention to him; his jaw is now slightly clenched. “I’m sorry,” she begins, she should never have asked him such impertinent questions. “That was private, I shouldn’t’ve.”

“No,” he says, cutting into her sentence as she has returned to read the same line of paperwork for a third time, “it’s,” he begins to explain as she runs her hand through her hair again. “You’d know, ma’am, all these hours you work.”

She is looking at him again as she chuckles softly, before she again looks to the work in front of her, “goes with the territory.”

There is another moment of silence between the two of them and she manages to finish the sentence she had been reading and move down to the next one. Her hand moves to balance a top the wine glass.

Then it is his turn to question her, “did you always want to be a politician?” he asks her and to her it sounds like he is genuinely interested. She moves to look at him once more, “I hope you don’t mind me asking that.” He adds quickly, she assumes he wants to make sure he hasn’t overstepped the line between principal and bodyguard.

“No…” she explains, telling him that no, being a politician wasn’t what she had always wanted to be when she grew up. That she didn’t grow up running around telling everyone that she was going to be a MP. She doesn’t know of anyone who did, well except maybe Roger, she could kind of see him as a small boy proselytising to anyone that would listen that he was going to be in Parliament.

Her route to Parliament was different, “I was a criminal barrister,” she begins to explain, it has been a long time since anyone has bothered to ask her how she ended up as the Home Secretary. “I witnessed at first-hand how the causes of crime often have as much to do with a person’s upbringing and social circumstances.” She tells him, her mind wandering to some of the cases she had dealt with in her years as a barrister and how some of them stuck with her, even now, years later.

She lifts both her hands out over the table, raising the glass in one hand, motioning at the paper scattered all over the surface of the table. “I sought a role in which I could make a real difference.” She smiles wanly at him, the glass back down on the table. Sometimes lately she has started to feel that she spends more time arguing with her peers than helping make any difference in the lives of her constituents.

He doesn’t pass any comment, he just watches her, before his eyes blink a few times, she looks back down and still he says nothing. She wonders if that was not the answer he had expected from her. Maybe he had expected her to say that she’d always wanted to be a politician, that there never had been a moment of doubt.

The silence lingers and another thought crosses her mind, maybe he is waiting for her to tell him that he is fine to leave her, that she doesn’t have anything else to say to him. She raises the glass again, the wine spins inside as she rolls her wrist in a small circle, “I’m keeping you.” She tells him quietly, releasing him from his PPO duty, before she lifts a set of folders and reports from the table and holds them to the side of her chest. 

She watches as his body shuffles slightly to the side and his jaw clenches again, his head only turns back to her, she watches him swallow, before the beginning of another question leaves his lips. “May I ask, ma’am…” he begins before he pauses, his eyes meeting hers with as much focus as she has seen from him, “that interview you did on telly,” another short pause, “did you mean what you said?” 

Her head tilts slightly, for a moment she wonders what exactly he is asking her, she always says what she means, it is a characteristic that has often led her into tricky conversations, similarly to the one she is having now. “I’m sorry?” she questions him back, her voice lower than usual, she enquires as to which part of her interview he seems to have taken offence to, she has a feeling, but she’d like her feeling qualified.

“About the Middle East.” He answers, the words come out of his mouth fast, it is the part of her interview that she expected him to find an issue with. She’s read his file, every principal reads the file of their respective PPO, some of them are longer than others, the PPO knows every detail about the principal; it is only natural that the principal gets some information about the person tasked to protect their life.

She perhaps should have expected his response. She purses her lips for a moment before she swallows, and the voice that comes out of her lips is the voice of the Home Secretary, not the voice of the woman who has been standing in her flat simply talking to her PPO, she looks out towards the kitchen for a moment, gathering her words. “See, I don’t only say what the people want to hear.”

She pauses again, turning to speak to his face now, “I’m about doing the right thing and making the hard choices.” She nods at him, her eyes focused back on his. He has made her bristle now, not that she will show him that he has. She will not let him see that he has made the hairs on the back of her neck rise.

“The thing is, David slash Dave, I don’t need you to vote for me...” She explains, emphasising the word vote more than any other, before she continues, “only to protect me.”

She stares back at him and she watches his face, watches for a flicker of another emotion. But his face remains the same. “Rest assured, ma’am. I’ll do what’s required.” He says back at her, taking his turn to nod towards her.

She looks at him for another moment, before she turns her head to the side, wanting to dismiss him from her presence. This has gone on too long now. This isn’t part of the pattern. They should have stuck to the pattern. 

She tilts her head and then raises it back towards him and fixes him with a look that has made many a man (and woman) retreat in the past.

The look works on him too, his lips shift to one side, before he says “Ma’am.”

He then turns on his heels and leaves her standing alone, wine glass in one hand, files in the other.

She hears the door open and close. He’s gone, she’s alone.

She drops the folder down to the table and takes in her surroundings.

They should’ve just stuck to talking about his wife and children.

Actually, maybe they just shouldn’t talk at all.

Perhaps she should have just let him leave before she returned the shirt. Had the new Chanel or even Rob return the shirt to him at another time or place.

By giving it to him tonight, by allowing him to stay longer, they’d broken the pattern.

The pattern that had been working sufficiently well for them lately.

She raises the wine glass to her lips; the liquid runs down the back of her throat. 

She wonders if the pattern is salvageable.

It is a pattern she might need to rely on to survive.

**Author's Note:**

> Here is a random fact about how I ended up writing pieces like this, when I first started writing I was terrible at writing dialogue. I used to sound too Australian so I decided to rely on the already written dialogue and make the words around the dialogue my own. 
> 
> Now I just love to write scenes :)


End file.
